Ridgetop - our place and how we muddle along

Senile_Texas_Aggie

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I am praying for all of you and hope you all recover soon.

Miss @Ridgetop,

That is so touching that you care so much. Yes, a lot of bad things have happened to different folks on the forum. Poor Miss @babsbag has had a really rough time. I hope she is able to get through it all. So has Miss @B&B Happy goats and Miss @Baymule. But they both hide their pain with a combination of optimism and gallows type humor! :) And Miss @farmerjan has been going nuts in the rehab center. But that won't last much longer. I am so happy for her to finally get her ankle fixed. She has suffered enough working as hard as she has all of her life, and now it's finally time she gets some relief.

Thanks again for caring so much. You are a wonderful woman.

Senile Texas Aggie
 

Ridgetop

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Thanks everyone for reassuring me about all our friends on BYH. I don't keep up with everyone's threads all the time and when I suddenly find their posts about bad stuff happening I do worry. Except for the mold issue and B&B's eye issue, it is good (?) that most problems seem to be age related. :old :mad:

We are all getting there. Sadly now that most of us have finally all reached our dream of retirement small farming and livestock we have to consider these problems occurring. My dear friend keeps telling me that we should sell our livestock and move into a smaller place to "enjoy life" without the work. She grew up on a sharecrop farm and knows hard work. Her health is not good, and she is 20 years older than I am so I know she is look anticipating when we will be past all this. I think she thinks that we have never considered it. For now, we have help and it is a very small scale "hobby" operation.

I am grateful that we have been able to experience the past 30+ years with our children and livestock. We have had so much fun. We all worked hard but it is worth it. Like childbirth you forget the aches and pains and only remember the fun times!

We can still do this, and enjoy it all so are not looking to make any changes yet. but I have realized now that at my age (almost 70) Angel might be our last LGD and this small Dorper flock is the last livestock we will own. It is OK. I will have other dogs in my 70's, of course, but I won't have Anatolians once we sell off the sheep. Anatolians will not be happy in a small neighborhood yard, and they would miss their sheep. We have discussed the disposition of the dogs and livestock with our family. Per our purchase contract the Anatolians will go back to their breeders depending on the decision between the breeders and my family. Older dogs may stay with family. Any young dogs will be placed by my family and their breeders in working homes, possibly with part of the Dorper flock. Erick will investigate any new home carefully. These are decisions that we look at each time we buy a new dog.

The sheep will not go to the stockyard auction, but will be offered to the different flock owners that produced them. I expect that between the multiple Dorper breeders we know across the western states, enough people will want their bloodlines, particularly the rams. Josie the Mule will be offered to my mule friend who will have no problem placing her with a good owner, or to my D-I-L and DS3 who have horses in Nipomo.

Knowing what will happen to our dogs and livestock if anything happens to us is a big comfort.
It seems dark to think about this, but like when the children were small and we made sure they would go to the appropriate loving guardian, I am comforted to know that our dogs and livestock will not be left with people desperately trying to get rid of them.

I have decided to go back into my writings and retrieve the stories I wrote about our experiences and print them off for the children. They will be fun for them to remember and to read to their children. DD1 has already started telling her children about t=some of them. The other day one of my grandchildren mentioned marching in parades and said her mother told her about riding their horses in Christmas parades with the 4-H club, and also the year DD1 rode on the tractor pulled float and her lamb spooked. It jumped off the float and pulled her off to fall into the road. She had to race after the float, toss her market lamb on, and get pulled back up onto the wagon by her friends! LOL There are so many memories to cherish. I want to document them before they fade away.

I am still praying for all of you here on BYH so please recover from your problems quickly. I love you all.
 
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